Charging Station For E-bikes

vfr400

Esteemed Pedelecer
Jun 12, 2011
9,822
3,993
Basildon
Yes, it was Tochoba's SCiB lithium titanium oxide battery, only ever used on one Schwinn bike. It still took half an hour to charge though, and only to it's 5 Ah capacity.
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They supplied a 5A charger with it that took an hour, but the battery had a high power charging port that could charge at 50A, which is 6 minutes. The problem is that a 50A charger would be bigger and heavier than a spare battery, so it wouldn't make sense to carry one with you, and it would also be expensive and require safety precautions, so not very likely that a pub or restaurant would provide one.
 
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Andy McNish

Esteemed Pedelecer
Nov 28, 2018
303
203
Bosch currently sell a 6A fast charger for about £150.
It will charge a 500W/to full in 3 hours. Uses a normal plug.

An hour long stop would give you 175W/hr or so which actually isn't bad. Like I said, if I ran a bike barn or cycle cafe I might buy a couple.

But, really only 3 types of people need charges away from home. People with long commutes (who have all day to charge their battery off bike in the office using their own charger), people on overnight tours (who again will bring their own charger and aren't in a rush) and MTBers who drain batteries like crazy by using them for huge elevation gains over a couple of hours. The last group might theoretically benefit from charging stations all over the MTB trails, but that doesn't sound economic and they'd be best advised to just carry (or keep in their car) a second battery.
 
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georgehenry

Esteemed Pedelecer
Nov 7, 2015
1,446
1,264
Surrey
I had to pop into work on Friday with no need to stay and used my Yamaha Haibike to enjoy my 14 mile cross country route to work. I plugged it in to my charger straight away when I got to work, did the small task required and had a cup of tea and a chat in all about 40 minutes.

This re charged my 400Wh battery from 66% to 87% for my 10 mile road ride home where I still had over half left 52% a round trip of 24 miles. I think this would not have been possible on my old Oxygen with battery behind the seat which is slower to charge.

So if you stop for an hour and can plug your battery in to your charger on a leisure ride you would get a worthwhile improvement in capacity on my Yamaha system.

However I was not quite so quick to recover as my battery, as I usually have around a 8 hour + gap before riding home, and certainly felt the reduced recovery time in my legs!